Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Primal Fear 1996

  ★★★½ Rewatched 29 Mar 2025

  I first saw Primal Fear about eighteen years ago, and I watched it for the second time tonight.
  I hesitate to write anything about it; what can be said by me that hasn’t already been said more concisely and/or effectively by others in the near thirty years since its release?
  What I will say is this, though: the score was a welcome and unexpected surprise. It’s so varied and quintessentially nineties, gliding through styles and genres and always hitting the spot that best emphasises the correct emotional subtext of each scene.

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  Unhinged 2020

  ★★ Watched 28 Mar 2025

  Unhinged would have been more interesting if they had done anything to make the premise or the characters unique. I’m thinking of Rutger Hauer in The Hitcher seeming to be an almost supernatural manifestation of evil, Randall Flagg-esque.
  While Russell Crowe injects as much sweat-drenched personality as he can into his role with his aggressive heaving and grunting, it’s still a rote role that is as underwritten as the rest of the film.

Popular reviews

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  Y2K 2024

  ★ Watched 05 Jan 2025

  Y2K is an inferior, tonally-discombobulated Superbad-lite.
  Throughout much of this film I was asking myself “what am I supposed to be feeling in this moment?” And although sometimes I found the answer, I got there logically rather than emotionally as I worked my way through the writer’s possible thought processes.
  Unfortunately for me this felt like an approximation of late 90s ideas put together by AI/people who didn’t actually live through that time rather than coming from a genuine lived-in…

• 

  Payback 1999

  ★★ Watched 07 Feb 2025

  I really wanted to like this neo-noir because it has a lot of elements that I usually enjoy: an intense, boiling Mel Gibson; a grimy, steely colour grade; excessively smoke-filled rooms occupied by shadowy mumblers; a pitch-perfect jazz score.
  The issue is that all of this never came together for me and I felt disconnected throughout (especially in those Lucy Liu dominatrix scenes attempting levity). It felt like a ‘70s conspiracy thriller lost in the trappings of the ‘90s, and unfortunately not in a good way.

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